Effects of mood and stress on group communication and performance in a simulated task environment
Open Access
- Author:
- Pfaff, Mark Stephen
- Graduate Program:
- Information Sciences and Technology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- December 14, 2008
- Committee Members:
- Michael David Mcneese, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
David J Hall, Committee Member
Xiaolong Zhang, Committee Member
S. Shyam Sundar, Committee Member - Keywords:
- computer mediated communication
teams
decision making
stress
emotion
human computer interaction - Abstract:
- In technologically complex work environments, human error is frequently cited as the primary failure in many large-scale accidents. These errors are often attributed to the high physical and emotional stress common in time-pressured and hazardous work environments. Emerging research in human-computer interaction (HCI) suggests that these accidents may also be attributed to errors in system design, particularly those features which fail to account for user frustration, anxiety, stress, and boredom. Overlapping findings in the stress and emotion research literatures suggest possible interactions between mood states and stressors in terms of their joint impact on cognitive task performance. This research explored these effects further in the context of group task performance. This research extended the NeoCITIES simulation, a simulated task environment (STE) based around the context of geo-collaborative crisis management, to run team-based human subject experiments designed to explore possible mediating or moderating effects of positive and negative moods on the complex relationship between stress and distributed decision making. These effects were assessed in terms of multiple dimensions of task performance including timeliness and accuracy of resource allocation tasks and content analysis of communications data. These effects were investigated in two similar experiments, each applying a qualitatively different stressor to teams in happy and sad mood states across a series of within-subjects trials. Performance data, self-reported mood and stress measures, and team communications were analyzed for interactions between mood and stress. The first experiment revealed evidence that negative affect mediated the impact of a task load stressor on team task performance. In the second experiment, the negative mood manipulation diminished team perspective to the extent that participants were unmotivated by a team-level performance pressure stressor. Additional findings provided insight into multiple main effects and interactions between mood and stress on specific communication behaviors and perceptions of within-team cooperation. Contributions of this study include extensions to the theories relating moods, stress, and team cognition. Among these are demonstrations of both mediation and moderation of stressors by mood states and additional evidence of the orthogonality of positive and negative affect. Methodological advances were made through the development of a new chat coding scheme to analyze within-team behaviors. The study also led to the development of a robust experimental platform for reliably implementing and automating complex psychological manipulations and measures in a team-based simulated task environment. Together these aid in the development of additional studies on team cognition as well as suggest new concerns in the design of systems use in team decision making under stress.